Suckerberg Paid His Wife To Have His Baby. He never had a girlfriend in school because he has zero social skills.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a call to reporters that users who had a specific search functionality turned on should “assume” that their public profile has been scraped.
Facebook’s Zuckerberg on personal privacy
Facebook said Wednesday that it believes most of its users who had a specific search function enabled have had their profile data scraped by third parties.
“We’ve seen some scraping,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a call with reporters. “I would assume if you had that setting turned on that someone at some point has access to your public information in some way,” he said.
The setting Zuckerberg referred to is one where users let other users search for them by e-mail address or phone number instead of by name.
Facebook’s Zuckerberg on phone privacy setting
The company said earlier in a post from Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, that most Facebook users “could have” had their public profile scraped.
In a section discussing search and account discovery features, Schroepfer said this:
“Until today, people could enter another person’s phone number or email address into Facebook search to help find them. This has been especially useful for finding your friends in languages which take more effort to type out a full name, or where many people have the same name. In Bangladesh, for example, this feature makes up 7% of all searches. However, malicious actors have also abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account recovery. Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way. So we have now disabled this feature. We’re also making changes to account recovery to reduce the risk of scraping as well.”
Hell Yes They Spy On You.
In the call with media Wednesday, Zuckerberg clarified further. “It is reasonable to expect… someone has accessed your information in this way,” he said.
This news is in addition to Facebook’s claims that political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica gained access to data from as many as 87 million Facebook users. Media reports had previously placed the number at more than 50 million.
Project Veritas has published its latest Twitter exposé, featuring both current and former Twitter employees allegedly explaining how the company receives, stores, and sells user data, as well as their attitudes on privacy.
In their undercover investigation, James O’Keefe and other Project Veritas reporters secretly recorded Twitter employees as they allegedly revealed the extent the platform surveils users.
“Everything you send is stored on my server. You can’t [delete it], it’s already on my server now,” declared Direct Messaging Engineer Panay Singh. “So all your sex messages and your, like, dick pics are on my server now. All your illegitimate wives, and, like, all the girls you’ve been fucking around with, they are on my server now.”
“I’m going to send it to your wife, she’s gonna use it in your divorce,” he joked. “So what happens is, like, when you write stuff or when you post pictures online, they never go away. Like, they’re always on there… Even after you send them, people are, like, analyzing them, to see what you’re interested in, to see what you’re talking about, and they sell that data… Everything. Anything you post online.”
Mihai Florea, a software engineer at the company, corroborated Singh’s claims.
“That’s how we make most of our money,” he explained. “You’re basically paying for the right to use our website with your data basically, and it’s the same on every free website.”
Former engineer Conrado Miranda also revealed to Project Veritas’ secret cameras that the company “already has a lot of information about you,” even before you join Twitter, adding “there is no way” to protect users if the information falls into the wrong hands.
Senior Network Security Engineer Clay Haynes also told O’Keefe that he had personal access to user DMs, expressing, “It is creepy Big Brother.”
“I mean it’s like a level… I don’t want to say it freaks me out, but it disturbs me,” he continued.
Project Veritas’ previous releases from their Twitter investigation revealed employees bragging about censorship against conservatives.
The liberals have said for years there is no such thing as “liberal media bias” but this proves it again.
“Just go to a random [Trump] tweet and just look at the followers. They’ll all be like, guns, God, ‘Merica, and with the American flag and the cross,” declared Singh, who was secretly recorded by Project Veritas reporters. “Like, who says that? Who talks like that? It’s for sure a bot.”
After being asked whether he could get rid of the accounts, he replied, “Yeah. You just delete them, but, like, the problem is there are hundreds of thousands of them, so you’ve got to, like, write algorithms that do it for you.”
Project Veritas Bombshell: Twitter Engineers Explain How They ‘Shadow Ban’ Conservatives, from @PJMedia_com: https://pjmedia.com/trending/project-veritas-bombshell-twitter-engineers-explain-shadow-ban-conservatives/ …
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“So if there’s like ‘American, guns,’ [in the account bio] can you write an algorithm to just take all those people out?” asked one undercover reporter.
“Umm, yeah, it’s actually how we do it,” Singh replied. “You look for ‘Trump,’ or ‘America,’ or any of, like, five thousand, like, keywords to describe a redneck, and then you look, and you parse all the messages, all the pictures, and then look for stuff that matches that stuff… You assign a value to each thing, so like Trump would be .5, a picture of a gun would be like 1.5, and if the total comes up above a certain value, then it’s a bot.”
An undercover reporter then asked Singh whether the “majority of the algorithms” are “against conservatives or liberals,” to which he responded, “I would say a majority of it are for Republicans, because they’re all from Russia, and they wanted Trump to win.”
“So you would mostly just get rid of conservatives?” asked the reporter.
Every Damn Things Seems To Trigger Me And So What If I Love Bernie Sanders.
While most of us are spending the day opening gifts and hanging out with family and friends, some are determined to find everything wrong with Christmas.
According to some on the left, here are five problematic things about Christmas:
Mistletoe:
Some feminists decided that the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe promotes a “rape culture,” with one feminist Twitter account writing that under the mistletoe, “male misogynistic tendencies to manifest themselves in reality.”
It is likely that the anti-mistletoe campaign started as a prank on feminists, but many feminists actually joined in earnestly.
‘Sexist’ Christmas Songs:
Feminist website Bustle has previously assembled a list of “sexist” Christmas songs. In the article titled, “8 Christmas Songs That Are Totally, Terribly Sexist,” Kadeen Griffins lists classics like, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” and “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”
She writes that “(s)ome of your favorite Christmas songs are kind of really sexist,” and that these Christmas songs “reek of a bit of antifeminism.”
1. “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” Has anyone ever actually listened to the lyrics of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”? That song is terrible! Thankfully, I don’t hear them playing it on the radio much, but the fact that it’s a novelty song that has been around since the ’70s doesn’t change the fact that it details a poor woman’s drunken death. To my knowledge, Santa doesn’t even get in trouble for it — unless you count in that TV film, wherein Grandma survives and Santa was framed.
Most Offensive Lyric: “It’s not Christmas without Grandma. All the family’s dressed in black. And we just can’t help but wonder, should we open up her gifts or send them back?” Priorities, much?
2. “All I Want For Christmas Is You”
To be fair, I’ve already written a separate article about how “All I Want For Christmas Is You” could stand to be more feminist. And by written a separate article, I mean I rewrote the song entirely. However, despite being one of my personal favorite Christmas songs, I don’t like the idea that the woman narrating the song doesn’t want anything for the holidays except a man — and that she’s relying on another man (Santa Claus) to get the aforementioned man for her.
Most Offensive Lyric: “Santa, won’t you bring me the one I really need? Won’t you please bring my baby to me?”
We are going to go eat and throw-up, then we will say I’m triggered.
3. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
The fact that we have an entire song devoted to a woman’s infidelity — with Santa Claus, no less — but no such fun Christmas carol for a guy — despite Mrs. Claus being a thing — really says it all. (And giving this classic Christmas song another listen reveals that there might be something a little more insidious than simple infidelity at play. The child who snuck out of bed and witnessed this alleged instance of cheating apparently thinks it would be hilarious to report this back to Dad… for some reason.)
Most Offensive Lyric: “Oh, what a laugh it would have been if Daddy had only seen Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night!” Um.
4. “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”
Listen, I understand that it’s a traditional fact that guys like to play with guns and girls like to play with dolls (or something), but we don’t need to reinforce gender stereotypes in our Christmas carols, okay? Update yourself to the modern century, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!” Let’s have the boys put aside the pistols and the girls put aside the dolls and roll out some gender neutral gifts, shall we?
Most Offensive Lyric: “A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots Is the wish of Barney and Ben. Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk is the hope of Janice and Jen.”
5. “Santa Baby”
I mean, the entire song is essentially someone trying to seduce Santa Claus in order to get a bunch of Christmas presents. Male or female — though the song is traditionally sung by females and directly references being a “good girl” — it’s still a bit awkward to be breathily requesting that Santa get you cars and rings because you called him baby. All the women who independent, throw your hands up at me!
Most Offensive Lyric: “Think of all the fun I’ve missed. Think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed. Next year I could be just as good… if you’d check off my Christmas list.” Sigh.
6. “Twelve Days of Christmas”
o be fair, “Twelve Days of Christmas” and I have always had problems with one another, mainly because when I was a child I had no idea what they were talking about with some of the items my “true love” was giving to me for Christmas. However, now that I am an adult, I realize how weird and awful it is that my true love is sending me people for Christmas, let alone crowds of people. Take back your ten lords a’ leaping, sir! I’m not into slavery.
Most Offensive Lyric: “On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me: eight maids a’ milking…” a.k.a. the exact moment my true love started sending me people.
7. “Santa Tell Me”
“Santa Tell Me” might have only just come out, but, yes, I’m going to call it out for sexism. Don’t get me wrong. I love Ariana Grande’s latest Christmas hit and I’ve listened to it several times since its debut. However, I have to be the one to reiterate something that many Christmas songs don’t seem to realize: you don’t need to be in love with someone, or in a romantic relationship, to feel happy or fulfilled this Christmas. Say it loud, say it proud. Can someone please write a song about that? (Taylor Swift, I’m looking at you.)
Most Offensive Lyric: “Now I need someone to hold, be my fire in the cold.”
8. “Baby It’s Cold Outside”
“Baby It’s Cold Outside” is a Christmas song so problematic that many covers just outright change the lyrics. You know why. You knowwhy. If you don’t know why, let me be the one to ruin this for you: there’s a line that subtly references the female singer being drugged by the male singer. That alone makes the entire song ten times creepier and ten times more sexist than it would be otherwise, hence why that line is frequently removed.
Most Offensive Lyric: “The neighbors might think… (Baby, it’s bad out there.) Say, what’s in this drink? (No cabs to be had out there.)” Cue shuddering.
‘Racist’ Jingle Bells Song:
Boston University professor Kyna Hamill recently wrote about “Jingle Bells” and its supposed racism, Fox News reports.
She writes that the song has “racist origins,” pointing to its performances in blackface from the 1800s.
She also writes, “Although ‘One Horse Open Sleigh,’ for most of its singers and listeners, may have eluded its racialized past and taken its place in the seemingly unproblematic romanticization of a normal ‘white’ Christmas, attention to the circumstances of its performance history enables reflection on its problematic role in the construction of blackness and whiteness in the United States.”
Wrapped Gifts:
According to a“Religious Diversity and Holidays” memo given to some University of Minnesota students and staff, “bows/wrapped gifts” are not “appropriate.”
I know I am a professional victim.
Also listed as not appropriate on that list is Santa Claus, bells, doves, and menorahs, The College Fix reports.
Hallmark Christmas movies:
Some have taken issue with Hallmark Christmas movies, as they are full of largely white and straight people.
An article published to Slate.com bleats that the movies, “brim with white heterosexuals who exclusively, emphatically, and endlessly bellow “Merry Christmas” to every lumberjack and labradoodle they pass. They’re centered on beauty-pageant heroines and strong-jawed heroes with white-nationalist haircuts.”
It continued, “There are occasional sightings of Christmas sweater–wearing black people, but they exist only to cheer on the dreams of the white leads, and everyone on Trump’s naughty list—Muslims, gay people, feminists—has never crossed the snowcapped green-screen mountains to taint these quaint Christmas villages. “Santa Just Is White” seems to be etched into every Hallmark movie’s town seal.”
Salon.com also wrote an article about the movies, saying the Hallmark channel gives a “homogeneous view of the holiday,” that’s “leaving minority actors out in the cold.”
In all seriousness, go hangout with your friends and family. Merry Christmas.
On Sunday afternoon, when Elmer T. Williams’s wife told him that a mass shooting had taken place at a church in Texas, he leapt into action. First, he skimmed a handful of news stories about the massacre. Then, when he felt sufficiently informed, he went into his home video studio, put on his trademark aviator sunglasses, and hit record.
Roughly an hour later, Mr. Williams, 51, a popular right-wing YouTube personality who calls himself “The Doctor of Common Sense,” had filmed, edited and uploaded a three-minute monologue about the Sutherland Springs church shooting to his YouTube page, which had roughly 90,000 subscribers. Authorities had not yet named a suspect, but that didn’t deter Mr. Williams, who is black, from speculating that the gunman was probably “either a Muslim or black.”
Later, after the shooter was identified as a white man named Devin P. Kelley, Mr. Williams posted a follow-up video. He claimed that Mr. Kelley was most likely a Bernie Sanders supporter associated with antifa — a left-wing anti-fascist group — who may have converted to Islam. Despite having no evidence for those claims, Mr. Williams argued them passionately, saying that photos of Mr. Kelley circulating online suggested that he was a violent liberal.
“Sometimes, you can tell a lot from a person’s picture,” Mr. Williams said.
I came across Mr. Williams’s videos several hours after the massacre, when one of them appeared prominently in YouTube’s search results about the shooting, alongside other videos making unverified claims that had been posted by pages with names like TruthNews Network and The Patriotic Beast.
YouTube has long been a haven for slapdash political punditry, but in recent months, a certain type of hyper-prolific conspiracist has emerged as a dominant force. By reacting quickly and voluminously to breaking news, these rapid-response pundits — the YouTube equivalent of talk radio shock-jocks — have successfully climbed the site’s search results, and exposed legions of viewers to their far-fetched theories.
In a phone interview from his home in Houston, Mr. Williams told me that he had created more than 10,000 YouTube videos over an eight-year period, posting as many as 20 monologues per day, and racking up estimated 200 million views.
His hit productions have included fact-challenged videos like “Barack and Michelle Obama Both Come Out The Closet,” which garnered 1.6 million views, and “Hillary Clinton Is On Crack Cocaine,” which had 665,000. He was admitted to YouTube’s partner program, which allows popular posters to earn money by displaying ads on certain types of videos, and claims to have made as much as $10,000 a month from his channel.
“I like to call myself a reporter who reports the news for the common person,” Mr. Williams said.
Whether motivated by profit or micro-celebrity, the success of sensationalists like Mr. Williams has become a vexing problem for companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which owns YouTube.
These companies sort and prioritize information for their users, and most have built ranking systems that boost news from mainstream outlets over stories from less credible sources. But those algorithms can be gamed in breaking news situations by users who work fast, uploading their videos in the valuable minutes between when news breaks and when the first wave of legitimate articles and videos appears.
“Before reliable sources put up stories, it’s a bit of a free-for-all,” said Karen North, a professor studying social media at the University of Southern California. “People who are in the business of posting sensationalized opinions about the news have learned that the sooner they put up their materials, the more likely their content will be found by an audience.”
Elmer T. Williams said he had created more than 10,000 YouTube videos, posting as many as 20 monologues per day on hot-button topics.
The phenomenon is not limited to YouTube. After last month’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, a Facebook safety check page featured a story from a site called “Alt-Right News” that made false statements about the gunman, and Google’s search results displayed a conspiracy theory from 4Chan, the notoriously toxic message board. After last month’s terrorist attack in New York City, a trending topic page on Twitter briefly featured a story from Infowars, a conservative site that is popular among the conspiracy-minded.
Conservatives have argued that YouTube unfairly targets their videos while allowing liberal channels, such as The Young Turks, to post heated political commentary. And some dispute that there is any conscious gaming going on.
“There is absolutely no strategy,” said Paul Joseph Watson, an editor-at-large at Infowars and a popular YouTube personality who has 1.1 million subscribers. On the day of the Texas church shooting, one of Mr. Watson’s tweets appeared as a result in Google searches for the shooter’s name, although it has since disappeared.
Tech companies, already under fire for the ease with which they allowed Russia to interfere in last year’s election, have also vowed to take a harder stance on domestic misinformation. Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, told congressional investigators last week that the company would take steps to keep false stories from being featured on trending topic pages.
“It’s a bad user experience, and we don’t want to be known as a platform for that,” Mr. Edgett said.
YouTube, whose community guidelines prohibit hateful and threatening content, has begun using artificial intelligence to help identify offensive videos. But conspiracy theories don’t announce themselves, and machines can’t yet handle the complicated business of fact-checking.
In Mr. Williams’s case, human intervention seems to have been necessary. On Tuesday, shortly after I asked YouTube some questions about Mr. Williams’s account, all of his videos disappeared, and his profile was replaced by a message saying, “This account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy prohibiting hate speech.”
Mr. Williams, who said he had recently left his job as an operations manager at a hazardous materials plant to focus on full-time punditry, has tangled with YouTube’s hate speech policies before. The company shut down one of his previous accounts for similar infractions, which he claimed cost him 250,000 subscribers and a lucrative income stream.
“If YouTube didn’t punish me,” Mr. Williams said, “I could easily be making over $30,000 a month.”
In a statement, YouTube said that Mr. Williams’s account was banned “as soon as it was flagged to us,” because its terms of service prohibit repeat rule-breakers from opening new accounts. It also said that its terms prohibit advertising from appearing on videos featuring “controversial and sensitive events, tragedies, political conflicts, and other sensitive topics.”
Even before this week’s crackdown, Mr. Williams was branching out. He sells cellphone ringtones on his website, and was considering starting his own paid streaming service. Tuesday night, just hours after he was banned by YouTube, Mr. Williams posted a video on Vimeo, another video-hosting platform. He pledged to keep insulting his favorite targets — Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama — and not shy away from controversy, no matter what the policies said.
“I don’t want to be on YouTube anymore,” Mr. Williams said. “It’s too communist.”
